Toys based on video games is still a woefully untapped and underserved market. Even massively popular lines like Halo 2 from Joyride don’t make it much further than stores that sell video games (even Toys R Us stocked them near the Xbox games).

Metal Gear Solid 4 may not have a release date, but the 12″ Solid Snake (picutred) will be out in November. He’s pretty detailed, and employs some advanced action figure technology to keep his body in realistic posts, which sounds nice but its really a shady way of saying he’s not getting double jointed limbs. Couldn’t find a price point, and Medicom is a Japanese toy company so be prepared to pay brutal import prices.

NECA has a handful of figures already out based on Eidos properties: Tomb Raider Legend, Hitman, and Legacy of Kain. They also announced at Toy Fair they’ll have some Resident Evil figures out by September, and Castlevania in October. Simon Belmont will be based on the NES box art, but Alucard, Dracula, and Succubus will be styled after Symphony Of The Night.

First 4 Figures has a Metroid license, but seem intent on making statues too expensive to buy on a whim. Zero Suit Samus will retail for $109. An excellent likeness, and sure to be the pride of your basement collection. They’re also stamping out Zelda statues. Why not make me a proper 6″ Varia Suit Samus Aran action figure and some Space Pirates, F4F?

SOTA Toys will have some Darkstalkers to add to their Street Fighter line. Dimitri and Lord Raptor will be out late spring 2007.

Its really frustrating that theres still no line that conforms to a scale and offers more than the most obvious characters as figures. Getting ONLY Snake or ONLY Lara Croft seems odd. Even Mario brought some supporting characters to Happy meals.

The breakout release on the download circuit this week has to go to Playstation Network’s “fl0w”

Fl0w comes from Jenova Chen, the lead behind the highly creative PC game Cloud. It looks like a mash up between Katamari Damacy and Geometry Wars. You control a small organism in a vast expanse of water, and can gobble up those smaller than you, but avoid anything bigger. Naturally, with everything you eat, your microscopic character grows and you’ll be able to take on larger organisms.

Wii Virtual Console gets one of my all time favorites this week with Donkey Kong Country. I mentioned to fellow Powet Army solider Phil Bond that this game is every bit as good as Super Mario World, and I stand by that. Going in for a few levels of Co-op and then beating that giant beaver, all the platforming fun came rushing back. This was truly a special game that resides somewhere between the retro cool of the NES days and the less favorably remembered 32-bit revolution. Back when this came out, the Playstation and Saturn hype machines were getting ready to roar, then Rare and Nintendo dropped a Super NES game that looked better than anything on a CD based system! Sure it wasn’t 3D, but 3D was pretty much a disaster until Mario 64 came along, so this remains one of the great 2D games from the days when 2D was starting to fade.

Xbox Live is taking the shaft 2 weeks in a row now. Wednesday used to be the day to grab new Live Arcade games, but the most notable release to Marketplace recently has been the Borat dashboard theme and picture pack (I’ve taken Azamat as my avatar!). Team 17 hopes to have Worms ready soon, but have been frustrated by Microsoft’s constant delays. THQ announced they’re releasing in a box, much to our surprise. Tetris Evolution better be budget priced, because theres no reason that the world’s most popular puzzle game wouldn’t fit Live Arcade’s standards. An even though I own many other versions of Tetris (in arms reach, I have no less than 5 copies ready to go), I’ll probably buy this Xbox 360 version too.

Submitted by Powet reader Nathanael Wade, we have some blurry video from an Animal Crossing E-Reader card. I’ll take some legible video once I track the card down for myself, but for now: here’s some of what you get when you scan Animal Crossing card #P15…

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This is not a new discovery. This has been a known piece of information since before I came upon the subject, but someone was nice enough to capture it on video for us, and that is new. For your trivial pleasure, we have Totaka’s Song and how to find it in “Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru.” Some English spellings of the title will differ, but it literally translates to “For the Frog the Bell Tolls.” Whatever you call it, the game was a Japan-exclusive release for the original Game Boy:

Konami is desiging a new Dance Dance Revolution game exclusively for the Wii. The game will use classic DDR pads which plug into the Gamecube’s controller ports in conjunction with hand movements using the Wii Remote and Nunchuck.

With support of up to 4 players it’s a good thing the Gamecube pads for Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix are also compatible. Since this is a more traditional Dance Dance Revolution game when compared to the Mario Mix variation this will be the first standard DDR game made available on a Nintendo system. Many of the more classic modes of play will also be available in this title.

This IGN articles gives us a very in depth look at the prelimenary game though as they note many aspects could be changed or polished before this title is actually released.

RobotBling has produced a tribute to Gunpei Yokoi, probably the biggest influence on Nintendo as a company, predating even Miyamoto’s genius creations.

This entry largely deals with Game & Watch LCD games, though it also has some interesting tid-bits on Yokoi himself, and Nintendo’s early history. A second installment is promised, and I eagerly look forward to it.

1up.com‘s Luke Smith and Kathleen Sanders spoke at length with Sony’s David Jaffe on his new game Calling All Cars in this week’s 1up Show. After all the talk of the downloadable PS3 game, the focus shifted toward what Sony is doing wrong, what Nintendo is doing wrong, and what Microsoft is doing wrong. 1up is making a reputation for throwing out tough questions, but I think Jaffe deserves some credit for answering them and being so candid. Few within the industry openly praise the competition or slam their own employer like he does, but the root of it seems to be he is a regular gamer like us, he just happens to have access to the process. The 20 minute interview is posted above.

As I promised, this week I’m doubling up on the $20 GOTW. One game brings back something that hasn’t been seen since the days of the SNES: a pack in game. The other is yet another good gaming compilation that may seem familiar to some PSP owners. If you have yet to spend the money grandpa gave you for X-mas, here are a few good cheap games.
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